The Diamond Island

Got a message on the backdoor answering machine at the root of my brainstem the other night.

There are times when I’m not in the mood to sleep at night. I’m of a willful disposition needing to be up late enjoying the night state of consciousness.

Coyotes are out in the treehouse ravine a-howling. They’re letting me know they found another snack to tide them over this strange and meager winter.

After a long series of sleepless nights I decide to answer the damn message. While the Dark Goddess can reach me anywhere and anytime, I remember I’m back in the stomping grounds of old. That place where my state of mind first opened up to her interests and my deepest longing to see what her interests were about.

All I have to do is touch the curve of her hip and ideas spring into being. She shows me how to form them into expression. My passion thrills and seizes me with an ecstasy I can scarce describe.

I dial her up to see what’s going on. Maybe there’s something she needs me to know about. It’s like having a super-powered hero hotline; except I never feel any heroic confidence and faking it feels like ripping off the audience, or the world. Maybe that’s how super-powered heroes really feel?

We talk about how weird it is to be back in a place where I would roam the night at all hours while most people were asleep, waiting to rise from their coffins to work off their debts. Did I really walk around in a sober daze, imagining fantastical visions and destroying hostile creatures of the night like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

I hadn’t even heard of Buffy yet, much less seen her show. That would be many years into the future. Hek, the movie wasn’t even out yet.

Is that part of the reason the system curfews youngsters? To keep them from unconsciously patrolling their homes against the invaders from the unconscious? People are scared of teenagers who might harm them because they don’t have the same understanding of the rules, but maybe if these teens got to live the darkness of the night they would build up strength and discover their amazing powers to serve our deep need for help.

The Dark Goddess laughs.

I ask her what’s up. She says this is the greatest battle for my soul I have ever known. To protect the goddess from one’s own worst malfunctions takes enormous self-knowledge and strength. I am doing this for Shiva to help him reach a goal of being able to recognize my efforts.

She reminds me that this is where I lost my backpack. I remember when she gave it back to me. I didn’t realize this is where I left it, but this place would be the sort of environment where I would have left a thing or two of value to me. When we bail, we don’t always have time to grab everything. Things get dropped in the rout.

She whispers in my ear to follow my inner wisdom. Stay true to yourself, she says.

Her teachings come back to me from those heady days of wild passion and fearless wandering: When she showed me secrets of the body she was teaching me to pay attention. When she had me worship her beauty on my knees she was helping me know humility. When we shared thoughts and feelings I let her spirit into my flesh. I am one with her.

You can still fly, she says. I know what she means and she’s telling the truth.

That’s what she wanted to tell me, she says. Then she hangs up. That’s just how she is.

I haven’t done a menagerie daily life post in a while, so guess what? Menagerie!

The Battle of the Galaxies, my catch-phrase for the crazy adventure both psychic and non-psychic in which I find myself, continues on. Killer bees, patrol fighters, special assistance cruisers, attack armor, and mega-units. All sorts of constructs are assisting me in the battle.

Plus, I have numerous friends galore helping out with the assist. The famous fifty; love to ya’ll and shout out holler of respect! Hey, every ship and every thought transmission counts here.

The thing about PDX is that it’s essentially a gingerbread house populated by a gigantic witch energy being. All the groovy and delicious wonders of the land are yours to partake of, but you got to give a pound of flesh to the witch first. That means a bloodsucking freak pipeline to your wallet as well as your state of mind.

And holy crumbcake is this entity hungry!

I’ve been busy though, and I haven’t missed much. Figured out who the backstabbers are. Got a handle on how to get help if I need it from the most unlikely of locales. And I even have a plan now that I’ve got an idea of what to focus on and what to ignore.

If nothing else the battle has been worth the trouble because of what I’ve recovered from the past and recognized in the present. This is huge. That frees up energy I hadn’t even known was blocked. It sets me free to do things I hadn’t thought possible. The hold has got some loot I didn’t expect.

I’m whole.

But even though I’m doing everything possible, leaving no option off the table in my battle plan, ultimately I’m at the mercy of luck. This is one of those crazy and courageous ventures you make because you need to, not because it makes sense or is even a sane thing to do.

That gingerbread witch is a large collective entity that needs healing on a massive scale. I’m going all out with maximum warp AND shields, but while she’s taken some hilarious point blank pranks that witch is still ready to party.

It isn’t just me. K has noticed it too and is a little surprised at this plot twist. I see others struggling against the gingerbread witch of PDX as well: regular shakedowns of their live brains and ducats. That battle-ax doesn’t jack everyone exactly the same, but the fear is still there at the base of their spines.

Things are certainly looking bleak, but I still have a few surprises up my sleeves. If I can’t do this now then I could never have done it, and yet I believe now I was correct many years ago in my initial approach to the battle. I just didn’t have enough strength back then. Maybe I don’t even now. But right now anything goes. Watch out!

In the meantime, I’m mining for gold and doing my work despite the duh-buddies, draguloids, and hidden units. My purpose is still the same: To do what I’m meant to do while I’m alive, for the sake of all beings.

I understand that I’m being vague here. It’s hard to be clearer and more accessible when things are so difficult and all-at-once. I’m in the middle of things and doing tremendous work in the realm of the mysterious.

Then again, maybe the point isn’t to defeat the gingerbread witch physically and psychically, or even affect her such that she stops jacking people who live here. By stealing back what was mine, I’ve outwitted her and she can never forget it was me who tricked her.

And just like that, I won.

There’s been a mission in my quest station notebook for a while. That’s just how it is. Some adventures sit in the hopper for a long time. Maybe they come to fruition, maybe they don’t. They can hold you back and they can provide structure by reminding you of which inner landscape parts you aren’t choosing to regard.

Mainly I haven’t dealt with it because it’s such a high level I’m unsure whether I could handle the responsibility. I have a difficult enough time with reliably undertaking the basic levels of compassion and maturity as it is. Higher degrees of consciousness are mostly ideals I aspire to in a very caveman gazing at the numen sort of way.

Well, since I’ve broached the initial exploration of communications leader Jessica it figures that the Shiva Message mission started flashing with bright green lights. Green means time to go! Except when it means cool it down.

Actually, cooling down Shiva is part of the worship maneuvers one performs when showing devotion to this divinity. Yeah, Shiva, the cosmic dancer who destroys and blesses. The outsider who knows all the inside pathways of existence. This dude is serious business and doesn’t mess around.

Time to bring out a bunch of old devotional manuscripts from 1994 and examine them again. Get to figuring out where this quest station entry even is anymore. The map goes way back to when I was studying the goddess Kali, the Black Mother, as part of my hanging out with the Dark Goddess. She had jackloads of stuff to show me back in those days.

I had a small art project I was hoping to do–a Shiva message bracelet with bells, semi-precious stones, and various miscellaneous charms. It had to do with a dream I had during my studies, suggesting in a vague way that this is how I would communicate with this divinity. Ring the bracelet when it was done, and boom a message would arrive.

Except that I never finished the project. I gathered all the materials, but stored them away and gradually became distracted. How many video games are like that? You gather up all the plot coupons, only to burn out just before the end of the story and never return.

Now that I read back on my descriptions of those devotions, meditations, and imaginational explorations I realize I was in a very rare state of ecstasy and suffering. Did I really experience these waking dreams, disassociated states, and multi-party conversations with myself?

It is said that even to speak Shiva’s name is to deliver you from ignorance and guarantee salvation. I have to ask ignorance of and salvation from what? My own pitiful state of existence? A lot of Hindu worship seems this way to me—if you can understand then this is great, but if you can’t it’s enough to have the intention. This is tremendous blessing.

All this time I’ve been waiting for the message, but I’d already received it. This seems to be a common theme for me: Getting the message but not seeing it until the time is right. Looks like Shiva did send me a message. I have it written down in one of my meditations:

You will be permitted to find and know what you are seeking—but you must know that if you cannot handle the responsibility of what you seek, you will be destroyed. Good luck Paul.

Oh, crap.

For a long time I’ve had a roster of crewmembers who populate the internal main bridge of my psyche. You might say that the Star Trek organizational scheme provides a ready archetype for my thoughts and feelings to constellate around.

Handling the communications console is a personality named Jessica. I’m pretty sure she was meant to be the female companion who accompanies Logan in the 1976 film Logan’s Run. I had a childhood crush on the actress Jenny Aguetter who played Jessica in the movie.

At that age I thought Jessica the character was the real person and Jenny was just her name in our reality. So creating a character based on her in my own mind to accompany me on my journey of imagination, or just general life influenced by a personal inner world, seemed like a good idea.

The crew of the Starship Snipe still carries the internal psychic organizations I’ve given them to this day. However, I’ve never explored them in detail—they all embody personal connections with characters from books, movies and TV that I enjoyed growing up with.

With the UFO becoming the central organizing principle in my psychic voyage, it may be time to reexamine my crew and the starship model. Ultimately, Star Trek and the characters I’ve borrowed are someone else’s experience that has become collectivized.

Such communal models are easy to access and use. They have value to our survival. However, they can only be launch pads for our personal explorations. The human dimension of wholeness requires that we make a personal journey to inner space to align ourselves with the actual organic connectivity of people.

I need to strike out on my own and identify the processes and elements behind my image. What if I’m oppressing or harming some aspect of myself by relating to it through a simplified model of consciousness?

So here we go. Using my power of imagination to inquire about Jessica as an internal personality and psychological adaptation.

The name Jessica comes up in my dictionary as having a Hebrew origin—Yiskah and Iscah which means “shut up” or “confined”. There’s a Greek and a Latin version, Ieskha and Jesca respectively. Unfortunately there’s no cultural context to go on, I’ll have to beam in the Internet connection.

Which, as it so happens, is Jessica’s job on the starship. She’s helping me along with this, naturally. Maybe this is a search for identity episode, a character building moment where I finally gain enough understanding to grasp a concept of her personality.

I think of the Teen Titans comic issue #38—”Who Is Donna Troy?”—where a detective investigation leads to the truth of Wonder Girl’s parents.

A strange smell of sanctity runs past my nose. That Holy Ghost effect that I know Lucerna would find compelling evidence I am on the correct trail.

The first recorded use of Jessica comes from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, and refers to the daughter of Shylock, who is of Hebrew origin in the story. I also dig up numerous baby name sites that give variations of the meaning as having to do with either God seeing, watching and beholding, or referring to gifts and wealth.

I let this trail of synchro-mysticism go off into the woods for now. Next up is the position itself.

The communications officer in Star Trek has often been criticized as being little more than a switchboard operator, with Lieutenant Uhura’s role minimized many times to the point of uselessness. I agree with this assessment, mainly because the position is actually critical to the operation of the ship. It requires someone who operates at a high degree of ability to perform properly.

Think about it. The communications officer has to direct the flow of information all over the ship. Repair crews, medical teams, and security details all rely on this officer’s leadership to act efficiently. If a crewmember notices something amiss the communications officer will likely be the first to hear of it and be able to warn the captain or relevant department head.

Depending on how you interpret the technology and schematics of a starship, the communications officer also needs a high degree of technical knowledge to operate the subspace radio and long range sensors that go along with that. I could see skills in computer programming and electronics as being necessary.

Maintaining a selection of diplomatic strategies and tactics is a huge order. Languages, linguistics and translation all need a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. The person in the position has to be adaptive, flexible, and open-minded as well as intelligent and highly trained.

There’s an element of espionage implied in this function too—ciphers, jamming enemy transmissions and releasing ship wide alerts. I can see why the Next Generation Star Trek world merged communications with security.

Needless to say, you see some hints of these roles with Uhura in the TV show, but it almost entirely disappears by the time of the movies. Space battles don’t require anything other than making sure the shields and weapons work. If they don’t speak English then shoot to kill. It’s profoundly anti-specialist, anti-technology, and anti-science.

Need to transmit or receive data or messages? Maintain channels of information in-ship? Jessica has done all this and more. I only vaguely comprehended it—mainly I fell into the trap of casting the girl on my ship into the role of social interaction mediator. See how powerfully influential role models can be?

The point of communication is to share, divide out, impart, inform, join, unite, and participate in. In other words, “to make common.” Such an important task! And yet, Star Trek has subsumed this role into something else after decades of making it a minor position.

No! Boo!

Well I’m bringing chat back, yo. Or at least recognizing what has always been there all along: Communications leader Jessica doing an incredibly difficult, complex, important job without recognition or respect from me. The collective reckoning needs to evolve; it’s way behind the times and has been fifty years ago.

At this point I have to start questioning my own assumptions. Is Jessica even her name? Is it a nickname based on a projection? Is Jessica really female, as a kid would grok it, or a human being from earth? I might be overreacting; it might just be the dialogue has been so limited as to include only basic details.

I’m usually not so good with practical questions. The time has come to face the difficulty and start asking, to open up a hailing frequency with my own communications officer.

Jessica, I’m listening!

In many fairy tales, childhood is the worst time of your life. This is worth pondering.

A brave and plucky life simulation computer game known as Long Live The Queen dares to take on the challenge of allowing you to explore this possibility, as experienced by a princess faced with adapting to a brutal adult world at court. It’s an extraordinary stance to play with in a market where franchises, sequels and reboots are all that matter.

Your mother (the queen) has died and your father has his hands full keeping the kingdom from falling apart outright. You have been sheltered by your parents so much you know literally nothing at all about the life skills needed to survive in high society.

Your father (the king) has arranged for you to be in complete command of your education with the finest tutors. You have but to select what two courses you take each week to steadily increase your abilities, knowledge, and experience. On the weekends you are free to pursue your own interests. In a little less than a year you will be old enough to officially assume the throne as queen and restore stability to the country.

As in many fairy tales, there are three daunting obstacles you must overcome.

First, every adult you meet is out to kill or manipulate you. That includes your father. You literally cannot trust anyone. People will try to use your influence to strengthen their own plots, attempt to assassinate you for reasons you have no idea exist, or just prevent you from reaching certain goals that conflict with theirs.

Second, you are still a child with very little control of your emotions. You must master your intense reactions to events and carefully think about the cost to your mood when you take action. Otherwise, your education will suffer and you’ll be pulled along by events instead of steering them toward your survival.

Third, you don’t have time to learn how to do everything that is required of you. There are not enough lulls in the action to allow you to close all the gaps in your vulnerabilities. Many of your opportunities will be lost, often without you knowing they were even there. You’ll need to make hard choices about what to focus on to be effective.

Good luck, kid.

The game is very unforgiving on the cruelty scale. Every choice you make has a cost. Decisions come back to haunt you later. Often you don’t know you’re in a dead end until you’re way past the point of no return. Maybe you should have spent that earlier time to learn Accounting after all. Save often and keep several waypoints looking backwards.

It’s harsh, but it makes a very strong point—you are in trouble and scarce equal to the demands thrust upon you. The alternative to victim is equally harsh though: What are you becoming as you get closer to your goal of reaching your own coronation?

I like it. Too often games don’t have the guts to face you with yourself through the choices you make ‘as if’ you were in a situation. Escapism is a noble and necessary form of play, but sometimes we need to be thrust into the haunted house. There are some forms of hypersensitive play with deep value that we may be losing out on. Long Live The Queen doesn’t let this path go unexplored.

Hanako Games have long been masters of the resource currency system. In games such as Cute Knight or Magical Diary decisions about where to take action and allocate points make for incredible gameplay. You need to be strategic and aware of how your choices affect the state of your character.

In Long Live The Queen this becomes manifest in the management of your mood characteristics. You control your mood both by taking actions during the story and by weekend activities such as attending court or visiting the dungeons.

Different moods give you bonuses and penalties to your education during the game. For example, if you are cheerful it is easier to learn many social skills. If you are willful instead of yielding, you will find it more difficult to learn critical court skills. But negative emotions can also be useful! Depression helps you learn artistic expression and being afraid helps you learn reflexes.

Mastering the balance of your mood swings is critical to a successful game.  It determines the speed at which you learn and at times what skills you can study at all. Every week of study counts; a streak of feeling pressured can be disastrous at the wrong time.

The choices you make in your education are the other part of your character’s agency.  What you choose to study will influence how you solve problems. You can’t fight off the bandits without some archery skill, but maybe it’s better to have enough skill in internal affairs to find out who sent them against you in the first place.

The level of a skill determines your options during the story—a high enough skill level in an applicable situation can give you more choices and provide you with information about what is happening. For example, knowing enough about what accepting a noble’s gift means will allow you to choose whether or not to accept it. Otherwise, you’ll blindly accept it (ooh shiny…) and commit to a course of action that may not suit you.

If you gain enough overall ability in a group of skills, you unlock an appropriate outfit. When you wear this outfit, say the Tea Dress, your conversation skills will get a bonus. Also, once you reach a certain level many skills give you additional options during the weekend. These activities may be used to make small adjustments to your mood.

It can be a huge help to have the option to play tennis at a competent level and blow off steam, increasing your confidence.

The game world itself is detailed and intricate, with a web of personal agendas that takes a lot of play to parse out. It has magical powers, mysterious creatures, and divinatory portents. There are secrets buried all throughout the realm. You’ll have to gain skill in the right areas to learn about the details. Or find out the hard way when you encounter things first hand right before you’re killed!

The descriptions of the skill levels as you earn them are elegant and to the point. I often felt I was learning a first class primer on music, history and cryptography as my young queen-to-be advanced. The interface is solid and the music is appropriate and subtle. You really start to feel as if you’re moving through a court of high pedigree and opportunity.

It’s an outstanding game. The premise is well developed and the gameplay is excellent. However, it has greater value than just being worth your time and money. There’s a powerful statement here implicit in how the game portrays a girl finding the strength to overcome the crushing expectations of the society in which she lives.

What kind of adult do you want to be? This is gobsmackingly important and relevant stuff in a world where girls flock to Bluebeard tales such as Twilight—where being a valued, infantilized object is the best you can hope for. This game pulls no punches in what you as a girl must face if you are to develop into the whole woman you are capable of.

It’s a twisted and warped labyrinth that requires you to continually reexamine what is most important to you. How will you pass through the landmarks of your journey without becoming someone else’s doll? Growing into a mature, whole adult capable of taking one’s place in the world is often a profoundly personal secret. This game reproduces that process in a way that is inviting, meaningful, and fun.

You don’t need to identify as female to find value in this game either. There are lessons here that males can take hold of and make hay on if they choose to introspect. Some of the experiences are universal—in the beginning you are full of possibilities, but should you reach the next stage of life (your coronation) you have undergone a highly individual ordeal of liminal transformation.

This is the fulfilled promise of computer games taking their place among the highest art forms possible by human beings. The contemporary era is a bleak wasteland devoid of meaningful rites of passage, save for diamonds in the rough such as this.

5 out of 5 Stars of the Magi.

I heard tell that without gospel there would be no rock and roll. I believe it’s true.

At some point, all great bands do an album of covers and jamming experiments. It’s inevitable; you need to return to your influences and work out their place in your musical development.

The acoustic elf-metal band CRIME and the Forces of Evil released an album of their turn at this kind of exploration and I’m warmly surprised. Usually this sort of thing is just not interesting to me at all, yet here I am energized by the exposure.

Total respect to them for having a lighthearted romp through their roots because this is important work. It’s an affirmation and a blessing to work through what has gone before and make it your own. The expressions of music belong to all of us, but if they aren’t renewed they fade from our spirit.

I loved their previous album, so I was expecting this to be a waypoint—a kind of rest stop to catch their breath and power up for the next round of discovery. Covers of standard issue favorites ho-hum, whatever. Boy was I completely wrong!

First off, these musicians have clearly improved since last time. How is that even possible when the last album was so good? There’s confidence in this collection, and that means this time they just sit back and have a riot of fun. Humor, camaraderie, loving life—the songs are well established but CRIME makes these songs pay.

They’ve been playing live long enough now that they are getting some serious chops. Some of the songs are live and sound fantastic. They bring in guest stars, another sign of leveling up, and while “Red is the Rose” is my least favorite song I still must say Leannan Sidhe sounds every bit as good as a mainstream act like Loreena McKinnitt.

When I hear “Old Black Rum” I find myself drawn in by the sheer fun of it all. It might be the best song about drinking I’ve heard yet. The elf spirit kindles a human passion for hanging out with your friends and singing along, or if you drink alone the recursive pleasure of roaming the hallways of your inner self in warm joy.

The first song, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree” is the highlight and easily the strongest song—such great lines and pirate attitude—but don’t overlook “Hove in Long Beach”. A great beat and good fun music to feed the soul. Howl it!

“Paddy Murphy” rules. Best rhymes ever, with such a playfulness I can’t imagine a better funeral romp. Then there’s “I’m A Rover,” which is so singable it gets stuck in your head for days. “Columbia” is objectively the weakest song, but it is still wistful, beautiful and real.

The last official track, “Dalek Boy” is an outtake of sorts, with the musicians all speaking in mechanical voices as they try to cooperate long enough to do a rendition of “Danny Boy.” The absurdity of the track distinctly establishes this album as belonging to the irreverent humor that the group is developing a persona around.

There’s an element of public disobedience inherent in the songs, of being a lowdown outsider who is unapproved of by the rulers. In a way this is just what a gathering of super-villains actually is: ordinary people with extraordinary viewpoints hearing the call to gather into an assembly and defy authority that serves only a few superheroes and their estates. Hanging out in the pub singing songs might be the most dangerous place on earth for the League of Justice for the Fortunate Few.

This is how a band builds a catalog of items worth owning. Holy cow, can that be true? Keep your eyes on these folks.

5 out of 5 Stars of the Magi.

Traveling carnivals and liminal spaces; mix well to create a mystery ride.

I played an amusement park game for kicks because I’m a sitting duck when it comes to the carnie pitch. Strangely enough, I won an emerald ticket to the mermaid tent and found myself reading a most curious book.

It is presented as a diary of impressions, with evocative photographs that offer a theme to each chapter. You are pulled along by the narrative and facedwith an organic labyrinth of the senses that rapidly disorients and alarms.

The reader and protagonist switch points of view; at times you are the voyeur, other times you are participant. How ghastly! The horror is imminent and personal. Denial or humor may dull the pain.

The only cure is to listen. Under the immediate tumult is the story of an anxious and compelling internal experience; a young woman discovering her shadow and the trauma of understanding her soul’s growth.

Dive into the depths and what you really have is the journey of Kore through the underworld. Plunge, hunt, rise. This is hard core stuff. People lose minds, innocence and teeth on journeys like these. Sometimes they don’t even leave a corpse.

To allow ourselves to feel for another is to open the door to terrible risk. Invasion by a vampire or a bluebeard are just one possibility. We might be swept away by divine brutality and carried off into an otherworld which is beyond human understanding.

It’s distressingly relevant today. Having an experience of the mermaid and the unredeemed passions of the underworld without being blasted to pieces is a serious human issue. All of us are in need of wizards who can show us what is in our being and how it is understood. Making more conscious choices might be the best tool we have.

The author is no slouch. She can craft a solid sentence and handle the whopper fish with the respect and skill for the inner ocean that makes it look easy. Her grasp of photography is stunning when you consider how much goes into the capture of a compelling image.

I had to dig around though; something told me this kung fu master had a few more concealed tricks in reserve. Multimedia competency and honed artistic talent are impressive accomplishments, but I felt I was missing some context.

To say the author knows her stuff is an understatement. Looking up photos from the book on her Flickr sets or watching the YouTube videos she’s posted, it gradually becomes clear to me she has a Leonardo’s Workshop thing going on. Master model of disguise, Doctor of creativity, Sage of academic standards, Ace crafter—I could go on, but I’m satisfied.

The book reaches me on a personal level because I’ve been through the underworld myself. Finding the other you is no mean feat. I have to admit I was afraid of where the book was going about half way through—finding one’s way to the center and out again often seems to me to be a rare moment in art. How exciting to see that I’m not alone!

The turbid darkness of it does make for some tough reading. Prose like this needs to be savored, and reexamined in order to extract the full meaning. In real life the labyrinth is a constant series of marking and re-marking of your path. I just don’t know if I could come back to this book; it’s that harrowing.

Indeed, the text itself indicates that the heroine hates aspects of the journey, that she wants it to be over with. Don’t I know it—preach sister! One ticket is enough for anyone, just like an everlasting gobstopper.

It’s too soon to tell with a work like this whether the text is built like that or whether there really is bounty. There are works of art that make a mark on you, and you don’t need to experience them again because they have served their purpose. Either way is valid, and worth whatever you paid for your psychic increase.

Remove the glamor and you have something most freakish: something ordinary and wholesome. Real food that feeds the soul and restores us to ourselves. Superbly well done.

5 out of 5 stars of the Magi.

Rat droppings. That’s what all art is made of.

If you can’t taste it, then the art is bland and no damn good. If that’s all you can taste, then the art is garbage and only good for flybaiting.

The true struggle for civilization lies in between those extremes, in seeking ways to express and adapt to life that awakens our senses and stimulates our thinking. The Wizards show us how by demonstrating their unstoppable powers, so that craphounds may learn the proper application of rat droppings.

Except many folks don’t want to know what the secret ingredient is. Many of them would prefer others not know as well.

Nick Mamatas is unafraid to tell us the nasty truth about rat droppings in the writing industry. His book Starve Better lays out a series of essays and commentary on his experiences clawing for survival as a writer.

The book is done well, which surprised me. I knew the content would be good, but everything is arranged nicely and in relational order. Each essay has an aside text as if Nick himself were psyching you up for the punching you’re about to take. He’s in your corner, even as he faces you with the champion.

Get ready for your fantasy projections to take some hits though. Nick’s stories reveal the world of writing as a mean, exploitative business filled with dishonesty and confusion. There are opportunities for subsistence, but they take discipline and self-understanding to see clearly.

How else would you find rat droppings? Not from the multitudes of distracted and wrong-headed amateurs buying the image as they dash off like mice to the tune of a phony game show like Jumping for Dollars.

I love the craphounds. I love them like junk food sliders. But crumbs! We need to recognize that crap is where the flavor is, and if your entertainment has any value at all then I’ll bet you’ve got some dirt in there. It pays to face this fact.

Nick doesn’t stop there, even though revelations would be enough. He takes the time to seed his text with genuine insight and intelligent reasoning. You learn not just that things are seedy or absurd, but also why and how to make these features into a tool. Often, just knowing the trick exists is enough for you to be able to use it.

For example, his analysis of perfection as a false goal is spot on. Screwing up or having gaps can be an advantage once you recognize it as an inevitable process. Completeness, that is, a flavor that is all your own—a secret sauce—comes from understanding when to stop chasing the pearl. This shows Nick to be a kung fu master already.

You need tips? If you take his advice on listening you’ll recognize that everything a writer is exposed to is useful. This applies to his stories in the book as well. From figuring out how to do dialogue, to avoiding your story’s failure just before the finish line, you’ll find gems of insight.

His best piece of advice might be to pick a direction—to choose a publishing outlet and act on it. Too many folks get frozen in fear because of their hang ups. Nick shows you that yes it’s tough out there, but so what? Do it anyway! You’ll learn something, gain confidence, and have a few laughs regardless of how you do.

Because you won’t find any rat droppings or how to mix your secret sauce by sitting around trying to finish that last sentence just right. You’ll only be one more desiccated writer corpse for the sucker wagon. Next in line please! Have your blood and soul card ready.

How well will all this hold up over time? I suspect a lot of it will still remain crucial reading for some while. The world is a gruesome place more than it’s pretty, and certain fundamentals of needing to know how things actually work as opposed to what people are expected to believe never seems to change. That makes this book a desperate breath of fresh air.

If you’re a writer, then at least after reading this book you’ll understand better the reasons you are starving to the crisp. Your choices, right or wrong, will be better informed and more conscious—and that alone is reason enough to celebrate.

If you’re not a writer, the book is valuable as a snapshot of many of the things wrong with education, the arts, and human consciousness in general. Rat droppings are not going away.

5 out of 5 stars of the Magi.

I had a vision while I was wide awake. I was rising out of darkness, out of the water, and away from a relief-image of Cthulhu in the wet sand under the water. The shape of Cthulhu had been carved out of the currents, so I knew this was a naturally formed image and I was leaving it to look up at the sky. I was then bathed in white light and rising, flying to the sound of the wind and the shore.

There was a sensation in my mind telling me that I had survived the darkness and lowest levels of existence. Now was the time to rise out of the depths and behold the light, to experience the illumination of escape from my innermost prison of unredeemed functions.

I had never even thought about it before. Yet here it was, happening to me spontaneously.

Then I realized that the rise of Cthulhu is really the rise of the individual soul from the depths of primordial forces into a new experience of life. The idea of cultists summoning doomsday is a short circuit of the truth, the infantile desire to have all things destroyed so one might not have to live in a world of responsibility and suffering.

It is a judgment day in that your personal world has been transformed so radically that you can no longer live the ordinary life you once lived in the way you once did. This is the rising of the inexplicable city of your life out of the depths and the freeing of your basic core from the superimposed constraints of your unconscious psyche.

Cthulhu dreams so that we might awaken and no longer imprison him with our mindless worship of childish things beyond their usefulness. Only when one rises out of the waters onto the shores of new life does Cthulhu indeed wake. A human being who stands up out of the deep and reaches the light transforms the world.

Is that why the killer bees started swarming awake something fierce? They knew this was coming to pass and they were ready to party!

The UFO is built and I’ve learned how the controls work. I pour myself a dark cup of pirate cider and have a trance-like out of body experience just sitting at the command chair, taking in the enormity of what has happened.

The psychological cauldron is bubbling and boiling. Something is cooking in the kitchen of my brain, an idea forming and coming into being which will require digestion of the multi-human level of experience: spiritual, physical, mental, emotional.

I realize then that I hypnotized myself into building and learning this magnificent Karavos of exploration. I’ve also been doing work in the valley of the skeleton trees with the sleeping sphinx while the rains fall in the desert of the farthest reaches of inner space. Killer bees are buzzing.

Now the time has come to fly this thing; to complete the journey and return to the real world so that this UFO may know me living in the ordinary world in a non-ordinary way. I intend to see this voyage through for the sake of all beings.

So I check out the message on my answering machine from the Dark Goddess. She reminds me to watch out for being a gross persecutor. I take this point to heart, knowing I have in the past been this very thing to her.

She then reminds me to look in my backpack. Everything I need is there, but I forgot they were there. Hurriedly, I open my backpack and find a glowing crystal star I’d found a while ago but forgotten, and a huge key; like a ceremonial city key perhaps.

This key is necessary to start my UFO, and the star is part of the power source for the navigational array. You kind of need a central operating unit to power this critical feature. I had not even considered this!

I regard the star, remembering what it cost me to recognize this marvel; the double broken heart, the traversal through the horrific sewers of human existence, and the impossible healing of monstrous wounds. Time to do this; I know where it goes now and why.

The key is inexplicable to me, being a combination of inner imagination and outer consolidated form. Gorgeous and intricate, but so small and light—I didn’t expect that. It comes off as huge and gilded, yet in use it has a dimensional quality of being very useable.

Indeed, I use the key and realize what a tremendous thing it is we all do when we put a key in a lock and turn. This is a bottom up symbology with great power that reaches the elemental core of how things work in space and time, as well as the complexities of psychological reality.

I think about the time the Tom Baker Doctor Who put the key to time in the time cannon.

There is a moment of profound night-tide belonging, and then I realize the time has come to name this UFO. It’s a moment that has been on my mind in its approach since I sensed it coming. How could I possibly know what to do?

The Sticker Stasher comes to my rescue. A sticker of a brontosaurus falls out of a book I momentarily move to the side. I recall briefly this dang thing traveling around my possessions for some time and never managing to find its way into my sticker box.

I name this UFO Brontosaur.

It comes from the greek word bronte, which means thunder, and has connotations of growling and roaring. Saur comes from the greek word sauros, for lizard.

Yesterday it rained for a few minutes for the first time all summer, and there was thunder. A week before that I heard thunder, and the clouds obscured the sun for an hour.

The time has come for departure from the valley of the skeleton trees. The killer bees are already swarming into the bulkheads and Lucerna is on deck, waiting to see how well my meager knowledge holds up now that the moment has come to put me to the trial.

The gigantasaurus Sphinx is in the hold, moved by mystical means I barely understand; the transposing of thoughts with methods of play that transcend our limitations of vision.

Here we go.

The valley of the skeleton trees is left behind, through a storm of rainfall in a desert at the edge of inner space. The emerald avenue is no longer needed. Instead, passage is through the ruby avenue. Now the task of flying this UFO falls to me.

The balloon is filling with bubble cola; liftoff is ON.

See you on the other side this journey!